In Memoriam: Andy Clausen (1941–2024)

We are sorry to report the death of latter-day Beat poet Andy Clausen, who passed away at the age of 83 on April 11th. Clausen came a long way from bomb-scarred Belgium to Woodstock, NY, where he was a mainstay of the poetry scene for the last quarter century. 

A tribute by Eliot Katz on the website of the National Beat Poetry Foundation provides a rollicking biography as well as a bibliography, listing his publications including "The Iron Curtain of Love, 40th Century Man, Songs of Bo Baba, Without Doubt, and Home of the Blues [and] an extraordinary memoir, Beat, about his adventures with well-known and lesser-known Beat Generation writers." Katz also frame Clausen's poetry as "extend[ing] the democratic-left and imagination-filled traditions of poets like Walt Whitman, William Blake, Muriel Rukeyser, Langston Hughes, Allen Ginsberg, the French surrealists, and the Russian Futurists, especially Vladimir Mayakovsky, who was always one of Andy’s favorites." He also provides this fascinating description of Clausen's Pauline transformation from a Marine into a poet:

Andy was physically stronger than most poets. After graduating from high school, he became a talented Golden Gloves boxer and, for a brief time, joined the Marines, which he left in 1966 after watching Allen Ginsberg on TV read his anti-Vietnam War poem "Wichita Vortex Sutra."  The line from Allen's poem that caught Andy's attention and changed the direction of his life was the simple but poignant, humanizing question: "Has anyone looked in the eyes of the dead?"

Folks wanting a taste of Clausen's poetry should head over to our archive page for the recordings of Chris Funkhouser, where you'll find several recordings: two tracks from issue #14 of We Magazine (one a collaboration with thelemonade), a December 1991 We Press/Gargoyle Mechanique Laboratory Benefit from New York City, and Clausen's set from the 27th Annual Subterranean Poetry Festival, held in Rosendale, NY in 2017. We send our condolences to Clausen's friends and family.

Caroline Bergvall in Conversation with David Wallace and Orchid Tierney, 2014

Today we're looking back at Caroline Bergvall's 2014 conversation with David Wallace and Orchid Tierney at our own Kelly Writers House. Recorded on November 14th of that year, this hour-long conversation has been segmented into thirteen discrete files by topic, including "Connecting the contemporary and the medieval," "Transformations in the English language," "Gender and desingularizing voices," "Fascination with the letter H and phonetics," "Anonymity and voicing," and "Apocalyptic nature of medieval times," along with the all-important "On the artistic next steps." At the time, Bergvall had just release Drift, the second of three books in a planned trilogy of works influenced by medieval sources that also includes Meddle English and Alisoun Sings. It's especially fitting to hear Bergvall and Wallace talk about the former's work since this trilogy has deep roots in her "Shorter Chaucer Tales," which was initially written at the invitation of Wallace and Charles Bernstein and first presented at the Fifteenth Annual Conference of the New Chaucer Society in New York in 2006.

You can hear much more from Bergvall's trilogy, along with earlier work like Fig and Goan Atom on her PennSound author page. Click here to start exploring.

Amish Trivedi on Jerry Rothenberg at Jacket2

As I noted in this week's tribute to the late Jerry Rothenberg, we were honored to publish his "Poems and Poetics" commentary series at Jacket2 since our launch in 2011. Jerry's partner and technical liaison in that endeavor since 2008 was Amish Trivedi, who has penned a moving and illuminating memorial detailing their long collaboration. While I made mention of this in Monday's note, I wanted to highlight the piece on its own because our listeners will definitely appreciate spending a little time with it.

I'll admit I chuckled a little when I read about the decision to join us in our new publishing endeavor:

I told him at the time that I thought the whole blog thing was dying, that we had all slowed down on Blogger, and that with the Buffalo List seemingly on fumes at that point, Ron Silliman having slowed as well, and social media booming, the age of the poetry blog was winding down. Did we want to move to Jacket2's new thing just to watch it all end? "Of course!" Jerry shouted into the phone. There was a crackling sound as the receiver hit its max volume and the audio broke slightly. I didn't argue — just agreed. Whatever Jerry was up to, I wanted in.

And needless to say, we are grateful for Jerry's enthusiasm and everything that's followed! Later, after lamenting their distant friendship, Trivedi shares a luminous memory of seeing Rothenberg read in person:

We had been lucky to run into each other a few times in person over the years, despite entire books of the Americas of our own in the middle. I was doing an MFA and a PhD and adjuncting and broke but there was always an invite on every call to visit Encinitas. Thankfully, the last year I was in person doing my PhD, we managed to get Jerry out for a couple of nights to do a reading and interview to Normal, Illinois. Watching him read to a packed room after a few glasses of wine, all of us sweaty and tired on an April night, is going to be a happy memory a lot of us get to carry forward.

As I say, anyone mourning the loss of Jerry Rothenberg will take solace from Trivedi's remembrance. Click here to read it in its entirety.

In Memoriam: Jerry Rothenberg (1931–2024)

How do you begin to describe the many lives of Jerry Rothenberg, who passed away on Sunday at the age of ninety-two? His output as poet alone, or translator, or editor, or anthologist would be enough to secure his reputation for the ages, and yet he excelled in all those areas and more with equal brilliance, fervor, and prescience. 

The poetry world we inhabit has been shaped over and over again by Rothenberg's vision, which comprehensively traces an evolution in Western poetics from Romanticism through Modernism to the present, while also inviting a diverse array of marginalized voices to take an equal place at the table. Who else could find profound commonalities that transcended time and space, or trace mercurial ideas into the most obscure corners of expression? Who else could subvert the anthology's colonial trappings, creating cherished collections — Technicians of the Sacred: A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, [Europe], & Oceania; Shaking the Pumpkin: Traditional Poetry of the Indian North Americas; and A Big Jewish Book: Poems & Other Visions of the Jews from Tribal Times to the Present; among others — that envision a pluralistic and egalitarian, almost utopian, worldview entire generations before the literary mainstream caught up with him?

The Rothenberg family broke the news on Sunday night with the following note:

After a lifetime spent passionately discovering new poetic possibilities, Jerry passed away on April 21, 2024, at the home he shared with Diane Rothenberg, his wife and collaborator of 71 years. 

Until the end of his life, he remained actively engaged as a poet, anthologist and performer — and as a devoted friend to his global community. 

His final projects will come out in 2024, including a massive "omnipoetics" anthology of the Americas co-authored with Javier Taboada; a new studio project with bassist Mark Dresser; and the first performance of "Abraham Abulafia visits the Pope: A fragment of a Steinian opera," conceived and planned with composer Charlie Morrow. 

Our own Al Filreis offered this remembrance on behalf of the UPenn community: "Here at the Writers House our hearts go out to Diane and Matthew and all of Jerry's many, many friends. Jerry and Diane visited KWH a number of times over the years. We were blessed by his poetry and his overall poeticness." He concluded, "[Rothenberg] always felt — and said — the poetry should be learned 'where poetry actually happens.' And he of course made it happen in whatever space he joined." Charles Bernstein offered a more succinct tribute: "Infinite sadness to get this news, infinite happiness for Jerry’s life, work, lifelong friendship."

I was lucky to meet Jerry during his time as a KWH Fellow in 2008 and to see him again here in Cincinnati in 2011 and Ann Arbor in 2013, and I would be hard pressed to think of a poet with a more magnetic presence in a live setting. He'd have you doubled over with laughter one minute, wiping tears from your eyes the next, and enraptured throughout — indeed, I never saw him read without entering into an almost transcendent state, suffused with a sense of peace and wellbeing. I had always hoped to see him read again, to get back to that place of preternatural poetic calm, but sadly it appears that I'll no longer have the chance.

As always, in times of profound loss, it's natural to turn back to the work itself, where a beloved author lives eternally. PennSound's Jerry Rothenberg author page is an excellent place to do exactly that, with well over 350 individual tracks taken from dozens of events spanning more than half a century. These include readings, interviews, panel discussions and talks, albums, performances, podcasts, films, and more. We also direct our listeners to Jacket2, where we were honored to host Jerry's commentary series, "Poems and Poetics," since our launch, and don't forget about our Reissues section, where you browse the complete runs of the groundbreaking journals Alcheringa (1970–1980, co-edited with Dennis Tedlock) and New Wilderness Letter (1977–1984).

In a year full of unfathomable losses, Jerry Rothenberg's departure overshadows all others. It truly feels like the end of an era. We join with his family, friends, and fans worldwide in celebrating the life and work of this singular talent.

Happy Birthday Bob Kaufman

April 18th is the birthday of Bob Kaufman, a quintessential San Francisco poet of the post-war period, who served as a vital bridge between jazz poetry's development during the Harlem Renaissance and its ongoing evolution during the Beat era on both coasts. Kaufman was an innovator in the surrealist tradition, as well as co-founder of the germinal journal Beatitude, and a vital voice that continues to inspire generations of writers. Born in 1925, Kaufman — who died in 1986 — would have turned 98 today.

PennSound's Bob Kaufman author page, curated by Raymond Foye — who co-edited 2019's Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman from City Lights with Neeli Cherkovski and Tate Swindell — is anchored by Bob Kaufman, poet: the life and times of an African-American man, a stunning 1992 audio documentary written and produced by David Henderson, which comes to us courtesy of Naropa University Audio Archive, Henderson, and Cherkovski. Extensive timetables have also been generated for both one-hour installments, providing details on the various speakers, topics discussed, etc. Individual poems read by Kaufman have also been broken out into their own MP3 files.

Additionally, we're proud to be able to share a twenty-one minute recording made by A. L. Nielsen, for which we have no details regarding date or location, and a brief recording of Kaufman reading the poem "Suicide," which comes to us courtesy of Will Combs. Combs' recording forms the basis for PoemTalk #158, in which Christopher Stackhouse, Maria Damon, and Devorah Major join host Al Filreis for a discussion of the poem. Click here to start browsing.

PoemTalk #195: Two by Ron Padgett

Today we released the latest episode in the PoemTalk Podcast series (that's #195 for those counting) which addresses a pair of poems by legendary poet, translator, editor, and pedagogue Ron Padgett: "The Austrian Maiden" and "Joe Brainard’s Painting Bingo." For this program, host Al Filreis convened a panel that included Yale colleagues James Berger and Richard Deming, along with Sophia DuRose.

Filreis offers some provenance for the two recordings under discussion in his write-up of this new episode on Jacket2. " Published a year earlier in You Never Know, "The Austrian Maiden"  is taken from a February 26, 2003 reading Padgett gave at our own Kelly Writers House, and "had just recently been published in Padgett's book You Never Know (2002)." He continues: "The recording of 'Joe Brainard's Painting Bingo' — a poem published in Great Balls of Fire (1969) — was performed at a November 20, 1979, reading given at a location that is now (sadly) unknown," and notes that "the recording comes to us courtesy of the Maureen Owen Collection of Greenwich Village Poetry, now housed at the Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library."

You can listen to this latest program, read both poems in their entirety, and learn more about the show here. PoemTalk is a joint production of PennSound and the Poetry Foundation, aided by the generous support of Nathan and Elizabeth Leight. Browse the full PoemTalk archives, spanning more than a decade, by clicking here.

Adonis on PennSound

We start this week off by highlighting our author page for Syrian poet, essayist and translator Adonis, for which we owe our gratitude to Pierre Joris (shown at left with the poet), who provided the recording to us back in 2013. 

This Poets House-sponsored reading took place on March 7, 2013 as part of that year's AWP conference in Boston. For this event, Adonis was joined by Khaled Mattawa, whose Adonis: Selected Poems was shortlisted for the 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize, and after the reading, the two engaged in a lively discussion about poetry and contemporary issues.

Unfortunately, in the intervening years, we have not had the opportunity to add more recordings to our Adonis author page, but this modest gem is still well worth sharing with our listeners. 

Congratulations to the 2024 Guggenheim Foundation Fellows

Amidst the shocking losses of so many beloved poets lately, we'll take all the good news we can get! Yesterday we highlighted a number of PennSound poets long-listed for two of PEN America's literary awards, and today we follow that with congratulations to three of our poets that were named today as 2024 Guggenheim Fellows. Poetry was well-represented this year, with nine fellows out of a total of one hundred eighty-eight spanning fifty-two fields. The full roster consists of Kaveh Akbar, Jos Charles, Elaine Equi, Vievee Francis, Airea D. Matthews, Robyn Schiff, Safiya Sinclair, Tracy K. Smith, and Mai Der Vang: a dazzling and diverse array of voices spanning from coast to coast.

As always, we're delighted to be able to allow our listeners to connect with the work of the celebrated authors, and you'll find recordings from three of the nine fellows on our site. On Elaine Equi's PennSound author page, you'll find nearly a dozen recordings from 1984 up to the present, including events from the Segue Series, Belladonna* Reading Series, Philadelphia's Chapter & Verse Series, and the Dia Art Foundations' Readings in Contemporary Poetry Series. Airea D. Matthews' PennSound author page is home to two recordings from the Kelly Writers House: a 2019 reading and her 2021 interview with Rachel Zolf. Finally, you can listen to Tracy K. Smith read from her beloved Life on Mars at a March 2013 Brave Testimony event also held at the Writers House. 

We send our enthusiastic congratulations to these poets, and the rest of this year's fellows class, for this well-deserved achievement.

Congratulations to PEN American Literary Awards Longlist Poets

Earlier this week, PEN America announced the longlists for their 2024 literary awards and we were excited to see a number of PennSound poets included.

Poem Bitten by a Man (Nightboat Books) by Brian Teare was listed for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award (given "to a book-length work of any genre for its originality, merit, and impact, which has broken new ground by reshaping the boundaries of its form and signaling strong potential for lasting influence") as well as the PEN/Voelcker Award (presented to "a poet whose distinguished collection of poetry represents a notable and accomplished literary presence"). We also congratulate Evie Shockley and Eleni Sikelianos who also made the PEN/Voelcker longlist for their latest collections, suddenly we (Wesleyan University Press) and Your Kingdom (Coffee House Press) respectively.

Finalists will be announced in advance of the ceremonies on April 29th. If you'd like to acquaint yourselves with these three very deserving poets, click their names above to start browsing their PennSound author pages.

George Kuchar: 'Eclipse of the Sun Virgin' (1967)

If you're located far from the path of today's total solar eclipse, or your forecast is for cloudy skies, we've got you covered. Feast your eyes on a very different eclipse, namely filmmaker George Kuchar's 1967 twelve minute short, Eclipse of the Sun Virgin. You won't even need special glasses!

Writing in Artforum, Ed Halter situates the film in an important moment of transition for the director that accompanied a key technological upgrade: "After switching to 16 mm, each brother worked independently, and George cast himself as nebbish-protagonist in nerdy-dirty works like Hold Me While I’m Naked (1966) and Eclipse of the Sun Virgin (1967), countering contemporary celebrations of free love with fractured ballads of sexual frustration." Kuchar had this to say of the film, which starred Deborah-Ann and Edith Fischer: "I dedicate this film poem to the behemoths of yesteryear that perished in Siberia along with the horned pachyderms of the pre-glacial epoch. This chilling montage of crimson repression must be seen. Painstakingly filmed and edited, it will be painful to watch, too." We'll let our listeners judge for themselves.

You can see Eclipse of the Sun Virgin and many more films — including the aforementioned Hold Me While I'm Naked; The Kiss of Frankenstein; Meet the Kuchar Brothers; I, of the Cyclops; Coven of the Heathenites; and Zealots of the Zinc Zone — on PennSound's George Kuchar author page, along with a three-part Close Listening program hosted by Charles Bernstein, which was recorded in Provincetown during the summer of 2009.

In Memoriam: John Sinclair (1941–2024)

We close out this week remembering yet another member of our literary community: poet and activist John Sinclair, who passed away on April 2nd at the age of 82. Famously enshrined in song by John Lennon as being "in the stir / for breathing air" (trust us, that rhymes), Sinclair became a figurehead for the marijuana legalization movement after being arrested in 1969 for giving two joints to an undercover cop. 

His wildly disproportionate sentence of 8½–10 years resulted in public outrage and vocal protest culminating in 1971 with "Ten for Two: The John Sinclair Freedom Rally," a benefit concert in Ann Arbor featuring an astounding line-up of musicians — Bob Seger, Phil Ochs, Archie Shepp, and Stevie Wonder along with Lennon and Yoko Ono — and political figures Bobby Seale and Jerry Rubin, which resulted in his release. One other notable participant at the rally was poet Allen Ginsberg, whose "Prayer for John Sinclair," written for and performed with Peter Orlovsky at the event, was released on a split single with Michigan psyche-rock group UP the same year. You can hear this track on PennSound's Ginsberg author page or by clicking this link: [MP3]

While typically this is where we'd close by offering our condolences, perhaps it's more fitting to say that we'll gladly fire one up in Sinclair's memory.

In Memoriam: John Barth (1930–2024)

Today we mourn the passing of preeminent postmodernist John Barth, who died on March 2nd at the age of 93. In a New York Times appreciation, Dave Kim praised Barth's propensity to "[run] riot over literary rules and conventions, even as he displayed, with meticulous discipline, mastery of and respect for them." "He was styled a postmodernist, an awkwardly fitting title that only just managed to cover his essential attributes, like a swimsuit left too long in the dryer," he continues, "But it meant that much of what Barth was doing — cheekily recycling dusty forms, shining klieg lights on the artificiality of art, turning the tyranny of plot against itself — had a name, a movement."

While we do not have a proper PennSound author page for Barth, you can find recordings from recordings from his visit to UPenn  as one of 2012's class of Kelly Writers House Fellows. Our own Al Filreis offered this remembrance of that visit: "Reading *all* of John Barth's writings — and teaching a number of his books to get ready for his 3-day visit to the Writers House as a KWH Fellow — has been truly one of the highlights of my time as a teacher. Giles Goat-Boy, with its piercing critique of universities, is one of the strangest and most affecting novels (and among the longest) I've read. RIP, Jack." We join him in sharing our condolences with Barth's family, colleagues, and fans worldwide.

PigeonSound at 15

This April Fool's Day marks fifteen years since our PennSound Daily announcement of our PigeonSound ™ service, which sadly never got off the ground given — among other things — the widespread rejection of pigeon post in the United States. Turntables still continue to sell healthily, flip phones are coming back, and every hipster has a vintage typewriter they paid too much money for, but the same enthusiasm could not be rekindled for avian poetry delivery, and so our fleet coos in waiting for more genteel and discerning times.

Here's our original announcement, which, in true April Fool's Day fashion, came a month early, alongside the unveiling of our Twitter account:

It's been less than 24 hours since we launched our PennSound Twitter page, and already we have 50 followers. Sign up to follow our feed to get micro-updates — from co-directors Al Filreis and Charles Bernstein, and managing editor Michael S. Hennessey — highlighting changes to the site, new additions and favorite recordings from our archives. Recent tweets have featured Bernadette Mayer & Lee Ann Brown, Tracie Morris, the PennSound Podcast series and our video page. 

Are you getting the most out of your PennSound experience? Aside from Twitter, don't forget all of the other ways in which you can keep up to date with the site through the web or your cell phone: first, there's the PennSound Daily newsfeed, which automatically delivers entries like this one to your iGoogle page, Google Reader, or favorite feed reader.PennSound is also on FaceBook, along with pages for our sister sites, including the Kelly Writers House and the Electronic Poetry Center. One additional option is the Kelly Writers House's Dial-a-Poem service: just dial 215-746-POEM (7636), and aside from news on upcoming KWH events, you can also hear a recording from a past reading, courtesy of the PennSound archives.

Finally, for those of you who feel overwhelmed by all this new technology, and liked the world a lot more before it Twittered, Tumblred and Bloggered, we're currently beta-testing yet another, more traditional means of transmission. Utilizing homing pigeons equipped with state-of-the-art (well, state-of-the-art circa WWI) wire recording technology, PigeonSound ™ (see prototype at right) will be able to deliver three minutes of telephone-quality audio up to several hundred miles from our home base at UPenn's Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing (our apologies to the rest of the world). Though there have been numerous unfortunate setbacks to date, we hope to have the program up and running by the first of next month with our inaugural offering: The Selected Poems of Ern Malley (read by the author himself). From sites that tweet to birds that tweet, we have all of your poetry options covered at PennSound.